


i can bend and not break

by ohmcgee



Category: Batman (Comics), Grayson (Comics)
Genre: D/s undertones, M/M, Praise Kink, mmm daddy issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 18:10:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6968401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmcgee/pseuds/ohmcgee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Can I come home?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	i can bend and not break

Dick doesn’t remember the last time he felt this homesick, this desperate to hear the sirens and gunshots, the whip of a kevlar lined cape in the wind. It feels like the night his parents died, tossing and turning on the too soft bed in the too big room that Bruce gave him, missing the sound of the elephants and the smell of dirt and hay. 

He waits and he waits, moves from the floor to his bed, to hanging up side down on his bed with his head on the floor and his feet on the wall. He’s been waiting for hours, for days, for weeks for someone to answer him. He’d take anyone at this point, just a familiar voice. 

“I want to come home,” he says into the comm, to no one. He realizes he’s just talking to himself now and he knows what kind of remark Jay would make about that, the little arch of Tim’s eyebrow he’d get. “This place sucks. It smells weird here. It’s too quiet. Everyone wants me to shoot people.”

He sighs and drops the mic onto the carpet, tightens his abs and rolls fluidly into a backflip, landing on the floor. 

He closes his eyes and lets his head thud back against the wall. “Can I come home,” he says for the fifteenth time, his lips raw from the repetition of the words, then climbs back into bed and falls asleep. 

 

: : :

 

The next couple of days he and Tiger are tracking down a bad guy with a bad weapon who wants to do a bad thing and Dick’s trying to guess what Tiger’s favorite color is. 

“Shut up, Grayson,” Tiger says, a shiny silver handgun in each hand. Dick tucks and rolls to dodge bullets and knives; Tiger mutters something filthy about circus freaks and flexibility, but he uses Dick’s body to push off of and pistol whips one of the guys in the face.

“I bet it’s orange,” Dick says, flying over Tiger’s head and landing a kick to one of the thug’s solar plexus. He goes down hard, the breath knocked out of him. Dick stands there over the body, hands on his hips and a wide smirk on his face, and Tiger rolls his eyes.

“Don’t look so proud of yourself.” He says. “We have work to do.”

And --

It’s almost enough, but not quite.

 

: : :

 

“You’re good,” Midnighter says to him the third or fourth time they happen upon each other. “But not that good. Stay out of my way, pretty boy.” 

“You’re _not_ killing that man,” Dick protests and Midnighter grits his teeth and they end up doing their usual song and dance. 

M gives him a fierce, bloody grin after Dick actually lands a kick, says, “Well I bet you’re proud of yourself now, huh?” Then he’s slamming Dick against the concrete wall behind them and Dick’s vision bursts into little white starbursts when his head cracks the stone, M’s hand tight around his throat. “You should be. Not many people get the jump on me, you know. I’m actually fucking impressed.”

He chuckles when he sees how hard Dick is, shakes his head and turns around, starts to walk off. 

“Wait,” Dick says, a little too quick, too desperate.

“Hmm,” M says, turning back around and walking up to Dick, taking Dick’s face between his fingers. “I would, you know,” he says. “But that’s not for me.”

M walks away for real this time and Dick bites down on his lip until he tastes something other than the desperation caught in his throat. 

 

: : :

 

It’s three in the morning when Dick’s eyes fly open, his body alert to the sound of the curtains fluttering in the night breeze. He knows the window is closed. 

Locked. 

“Hi,” Dick says to the darkness.

Bruce doesn’t say anything, shocker of shocks, but Dick can hear the rustle of the cape and the heavy press of boots on the carpet. He can smell the leather and sweat and skin and _Bruce_. He can smell home. 

“Are you --” Dick says, feeling the dip at the foot of the bed when Bruce sits down. It’s pitch black dark in his room, no moon and clouds covering the sky, but he can almost make out the shape of him if he tries. “Can I come home?”

It’s the first time he’s said the word where he’s actually expected a reply and the silence that hangs in the air twists the sharp thing behind his ribs in even deeper.

“No,” Bruce says and just like that, like Bruce spoke some magic word Dick gets angry, angrier than he’s maybe ever been in his life. It feels like the wave of anger that rocked through him after his parents died, after the grief faded away and he was nothing but a tiny ball of rage that Bruce had no idea what to do with. It hadn’t lasted long then, but he feels it now, that same irrational need to scream and kick and lash out uncontrollably, to just destroy something. 

He doesn’t scream, but he does try to take a swing. Bruce, of course, grabs Dick’s wrist before he can connect, fingers tight and pressing into the tiny bones in his arm. Bruce squeezes harder when Dick tries to yank away from him and Dick _whimpers_ , leans forward for --

He isn’t sure what.

“Dick,” Bruce says, measured. “I know this isn’t easy for you.”

“I’m fine,” Dick says, the words almost like muscle memory on his mouth. “I’ve made lots of friends. You’d like them. If you were the kind of person who liked people.”

“You miss Gotham,” Bruce says and Dick flinches from the words, from the way Bruce can always just see him, no matter what mask he’s wearing. 

“I’m not --” Dick says, then lets out a frustrated sigh. “Why are you _here_?”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“Yes,” Dick snaps, his blood still thrumming with misplaced rage. “If you aren’t here to tell me I don’t have to work for psychos anymore, if you aren’t here to say I can have my damn life back, then fucking _go._ ”

“Somehow I don’t think that’s what you really want,” Bruce says, still just as calm, just as measured, and Dick takes another swing.

This time it connects and he hears the grunt Bruce makes right before he gets a heavy gauntlet to his middle, knocking the air of him. They go around a few minutes, Bruce mostly blocking his kicks and punches, but Dick gets a few in and by the time Bruce finally pins him to the bed, Dick’s wrists twisted painfully behind his back, they’re both out of breath. 

“You don’t know what I want,” Dick grits out, his face shoved into the comforter, and Bruce strokes the soft part of the inside of his wrist even as his other one holds them tight enough to bruise. 

“So why don’t you tell me?” Bruce says behind his ear, close enough that Dick can feel the sticky humidity of his breath on his skin and Dick’s entire body shivers. 

“Bruce,” Dick huffs out, the muscles in his arms starting to twinge from being bent back at such a sharp angle. “Please. Just….go.”

“Okay,” Bruce says and lets Dick’s wrists go so suddenly that Dick falls forward on the bed. His arms lay limply at his sides, his wrists rubbed raw from Bruce’s gauntlets wrapped around them so tight, and there’s no solid body behind him, no breath on his ear, and --

Dick thinks this might be what a panic attack feels like, actually. 

“Bruce,” he says, his voice shaking along with the rest of him. “Bruce -- don’t -- please --”

Dick vaguely registers the sound of gauntlets dropping over the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears, then Bruce’s voice shushing him, Bruce pushing him onto his back and crawling over him, grabbing Dick’s face with fingers covered in calluses, that smell like leather and metal. Maybe it’s temporary insanity when Dick lets his tongue dart out to taste them; maybe it’s something he’s wanted to do since he was fourteen. 

“Dick,” Bruce whispers and Dick thinks _well you fucked up again Grayson_ , but then Bruce is pushing more of his fingers into Dick’s mouth, up to the first knuckle and stroking Dick’s tongue with them until Dick’s brain comes back online and he swirls his tongue around them, licks the taste of salt and skin right off of them. 

“You don’t know,” Bruce murmurs, just slowly fucking Dick’s mouth with his fingers. “You’ve never known. How beautiful you are. How perfect. What you do to me.”

Dick whimpers and Bruce pulls his fingers out, traces the shape of Dick’s mouth with them. “How good you are,” Bruce says and Dick shudders beneath him, instantly hard against Bruce’s thigh and Dick suddenly realizes Bruce has shed more than just the gauntlets. Everything’s gone except the undersuit and Dick can actually feel him, feel Bruce against him, not layers of kevlar and leather and armor, just _him_. 

“I know you hate this assignment, but you’re doing so good for me, Dick,” Bruce says and his face is so close that Dick can smell the Tic Tacs on his breath, the little white ones he keeps in the pouch on his belt with the fingerprint putty. 

“Bruce, please,” Dick breathes out, doesn’t know at all what he’s asking for, just that the words good and perfect and for me keep ringing in his head and making his dick harder and harder and if Bruce doesn’t do _something_ \--

“Tell me,” Bruce says. “You can tell me anything, Dick. You deserve it. You deserve so much more than I can ever give you.”

“ _Bruce,_ ,” Dick whines, squirms beneath him and digs his fingers into Bruce’s shoulders. “Just -- just keep talking.”

Bruce makes a sound in the back of his throat and leans in, kisses the underside of Dick’s jaw and his stubble scrapes Dick’s skin in the most deliciously sweet burn. “You know I’m not good at that,” he says and Dick does. Dick probably knows that more than he knows that he was born to fly, more than he knows every dank sewer in Gotham. He knows Bruce would rather cut his own arm off than actually talk to someone, so this -- this is the most surreal moment of his life. It could actually be one very elaborate, very tactile dream. 

“You were always better with words,” Bruce says, mouth dragging down Dick’s throat. “Really, you were always better at everything. A better Batman, a better man…”

“No --”

“Shh,” Bruce says, squeezing Dick’s throat with his hand. “I’m talking now.”

Dick’s moans and presses up against Bruce’s hand like a reflex, like pure instinct, and he’s probably going insane because the first thought he has is that nothing has ever felt safer.

“Look at you,” Bruce says and his voice has dropped at least two octaves and has that gravelly rumble to it now. It’s not quite Batman, not quite Bruce. It’s a voice Dick’s never heard him use before -- at least not on _him_. “So good for me. So beautiful and needy.”

Then he reaches down and grabs Dick through his boxer briefs and Dick forgets how to breathe. His brain is too busy telling his body to do other things, like push up into that strong, solid hand, to think about how caged in he is right now, how all of Bruce’s weight pressing down on him doesn’t just feel good, it feels _right_. 

“ _Bruce_ \--”

“Breathe,” Bruce says and it's not -- it’s an _order_ \-- and he squeezes Dick through his shorts and Dick sucks in a deep breath. “Very good.”

“S-stop,” Dick says, shaking beneath him. He doesn’t know how much more of this he can take. It’s -- it’s exactly what he wants and maybe that’s why it’s too much. 

“Why?” Bruce says, then pushes Dick’s boxers down and wraps his hand around him and Dick honestly cries out like he’s fucking _wounded_ or something. “You don’t want me to tell you how good you are for me? How perfect you always are?”

“Please,” Dick whines, clawing at Bruce’s back. He’s either trying to get away or he’s trying to claw his way inside Bruce’s skin; he can’t decide. 

“You deserve this,” Bruce murmurs against Dick’s mouth as he touches him, the amount of precome Dick has leaked everywhere more than enough to make his fist slide up and down Dick’s cock with ease. “You deserve everything. I’d give you it, you know. I’d give you anything you wanted.”

“I know,” Dick manages to collect enough brain cells to say because it seems important.

“For now though,” Bruce says. “Give me this. Do one more thing for me.” 

“Anything,” Dick pants. “You know...anything, Bruce.”

“Good,” Bruce says, then leans down and Dick feels the scrape of stubble on his skin right before Bruce whispers, “Come for me.”

White bursts behind Dick’s eyes and then a strong, heavy hand clamps over his mouth and Dick screams into it, hips jerking as he spills and spills all over Bruce’s hand and fingers, whimpering against Bruce’s palm when he doesn’t _stop_ , just keeps stroking him through his orgasm, murmuring things Dick can’t focus enough to make out in his ear as he wrings every last drop, every single shudder and twitch and whimper out of him. 

He’s so fucked out after that he lets Bruce move him onto his side, hums softly when he feels the solid heat of Bruce’s chest pressed against his back, his lips on the back of his shoulder. 

“That was perfect,” he murmurs. “Sleep now.”

“But --” Dick tries to protest, but then Bruce’s hand is in his hair, stroking his head right above the nape of his neck the way he used to do when Dick would have nightmares and Alfred’s cocoa wouldn’t do the trick. 

_I have them too_ , Bruce had told him the first time. _The worst ones are when I save them._

 _Because then you wake up,_ Dick had said, legs pulled up to his chest. 

_Yes_ , Bruce had said. _And then you wake up._

It wasn’t a particularly cheerful memory, but it’s one that has stuck with Dick the most. He remembers being a kid from the circus and sitting at a huge, antique table in a mansion with a billionaire and thinking _I get you_. And knowing Bruce got him too. 

Dick falls asleep with Bruce’s fingers brushing the back of his neck and in his dreams Bruce is still there in the morning.

 

: : :

 

When Dick wakes up it’s daylight out and there’s no sign that Bruce was ever in his room.He gets up and takes a shower, brushes his teeth, and is Dick legitimately is starting to wonder if it really was just a fucked up lucid dream until he looks over and sees the small note beneath the lamp on the nightstand. 

_I don’t like your friends._

_-B_

Dick giggles so hard he falls off the bed.


End file.
